Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/210

198 has manifested itself in the fact that the raw materials of food—cattle, etc.—retained their Saxon names, such as calf, ox, sheep, etc., while the prepared meat is called by the French terms, beef, veal, mutton. Words used by the aristocracy will retain a high and polite signification, while the corresponding words in Saxon used by the vulgar will be spurned by the higher classes, and will receive a vulgar stamp.

Another striking instance of the vulgarizing influence of the Norman Conquest upon the Saxon vernacular is afforded by the word "buxom." In Anglo-Saxon beogan, bugan, and bocsum, it still obtains in the German, biegen, biegsam. In German it has retained its original meaning of bendable, pliable, slender, etc. In a mental sense it meant obedient (pliable), as "Under obedience to be and buxum to the lawe" ("Piers Plowman," about 1362). In Chaucer ("Clerkes Tale") we have it in its original physical meaning: "And they with humble entent buxumly—knelynge upon hir knees ful reverently." But in English we find a strange alteration in its meaning as applied to the human female figure. I may venture upon the following hypothesis with regard to the history of this word: Originally, I believe, this word was applied to the female figure to denote grace, litheness, slimness. If I remember rightly, some modern poet uses the word in that sense; the "buxom willow," or in some similar context. It would then convey the attribute of pliability and grace which is given in the words of Musset addressed to a lady: "Dans nos valses joyeuses je vous sentait dans mes bras plier comme un roseau." So, I venture to say, the word buxom was frequently applied to graceful, slender girls as a mark of high admiration. After the Norman Conquest, I suppose this to have been the action on the part of those who struck the key-note of bon-ton. Consciously, or half-consciously, the following train of thought seems to have pressed itself upon those of a markedly aristocratic turn of mind: "The people is essentially a distinct body from us, the aristocracy, especially the woman whom we admire so much. The words of the people must denote the attributes of the people: the lady is graceful, etc.; the woman is healthy, stout, red-cheeked, etc.—the lady dances, and we can feel her 'se plier comme un roseau,' but not the peasant-woman." Now, they found the word buxom indicating beauty in the woman of the people, they therefore influenced language, so that "buxom" conveyed the meaning of the beauty peculiar to the woman of the people.

Such a process is not restricted to the historical development of England; but we meet with it repeatedly in history, whenever there is this bloodless intellectual and linguistic warfare between classes. In Germany, e. g., the purely German words were repressed in meaning in proportion as the French gained footing as the language of the courts and of polite society through Frederick the Great and the subsequent Napoleonic influence. The Frau and Frauenzimmer assumed a lower connotation the more the word "madame" was used in connection with